Everyone Is Talking About AI, but What Does It Mean for Marketers Right Now?

Fodder for the NewFronts

Artificial Intelligence may be the most bandied about term of 2017. For consumers, AI is powering everything from virtual personal assistants and real-time translation to GPS navigation and self-driving cars. In business, AI is under the hood of everything from ride-sharing fleets to aerial analysis of shopping malls to credit scoring.

Ad and marketing tech, of course, are no exception. As the CMO’s role grows to include everything from ad tech to customer relations and corporate strategy, it becomes clear that unique and valuable insights—the kind analyzed by AI from mountains and mountains of data—are key. “The term AI is really fraught with multiple definitions,” says Wilson Raj, global director of SAS, “but I think what’s really happening is the data revolution.”

After all, the explosion of minable data and the ability of machine learning and AI to make sense of that data means that AI is a no-brainer for marketers to maximize their reach. Likewise, consumers accustomed to flawless Netflix recommendations and one-hour, real-world Amazon deliveries now expect advertising to display similarly predictive powers. That’s because surprising, delightful experiences aren’t just the purview of laptops and smartphones.

Will the real AI please stand up?

What do we mean by AI? At a minimum, it’s technology that enables machines to perform more like humans, with the ability to understand language, recognize what’s in front of them, translate and make decisions—and, in a perfect world, to do this in a way that looks and feels human. But what does this mean for marketers?

“It’s important to be on those platforms [that use AI] so that we understand the benefits, so we understand the customer experience,” says Pat McLean, CMO of TD Bank. “We believe that customers still have an expectation that AI is delivering a personal and meaningful interaction for them and it’s not just transactional.”

For something to be AI, it needs to be able to learn on its own. Much like humans, machines need real-world examples to do this. In this case, the “training food” is data, and the more data a machine receives, the smarter and more accurate it gets with whatever human task it has been designated to do.

Data, data, data

Typically, targeted advertising has relied on a few data points: age, demographics, location, gender and purchase history, for instance. Marketers decide what groups or geographical locations they want to target, then set it and forget it. Today, marketers know how valuable their data is, and they’re demanding it be used to make their messaging resonate. Crunching all those seemingly disparate data points can only be done by AI, which gets better and better at finding the right moment to serve an ad.

To do this, AI gleans deeper insights around, say, something as complex as the weather, making it possible to tailor creative and messaging in real time.

“We’re finally getting to critical mass in terms of the data we get off of these IoT machines and sensors around the world, which can be used by business, for business,” says Jordan Bitterman, CMO of The Weather Company, now part of IBM Watson. “Where we drive more sophistication is when we combine that data with other IoT data, and that data could be data that comes from cars, from washing machines. So whether you’re in auto, retail or CPG, there are always ways we use that IoT moving forward.”

For financial services giant BlackRock, which manages over $5 trillion in assets, AI makes it possible to reach investors at critical moments. “Gone are the days where a brand can plan for a major moment like the Super Bowl and have somebody sitting in the room ready to send out a tweet,” says Jason Hill, BlackRock’s global head of media. “When you’re in an industry that’s tied to the markets like we are, every day is the Super Bowl. There’s always something happening out there that’s going to send markets in one direction or another, that’s going to have people thinking about their investments.”

One person, many screens

One area where AI-informed advertising can help is in the marriage of television and digital. For the average consumer, seeing the same ad over and over across devices is a particularly annoying experience. AI can solve that issue.